Men in Black III Review

The addition of time travel and Josh Brolin are good ideas, but the movie never comes to life.

Men in Black really holds up. I recently re-watched the first two films in this series in anticipation of Men in Black III and was very happy to see that the original film is just as funny and fun as I remembered it. The chemistry between Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones is terrific, the film’s sense of humor is appealingly quirky and they do some very clever things with the “aliens among us” premise.

…But then they made the sequels.

Yes, sad to say, but Men in Black III is another lackluster installment in this series, after the terribly disappointing Men in Black II. It’s been 10 years since the second film (and 15 since the first), which is a lifetime in Hollywood. I shared the hope of other fans that the MIB team would come back strong after this much time away, but unfortunately, this is one of those Big Summer Movies that feels entirely disposable and forgettable.

Yes, I would say Men in Black III is somewhat better than the second film. It at least doesn’t feel as redundant, with a more interesting premise – an alien enemy of Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K, “Boris the Animal” (Jemaine Clements), escapes and travels back to 1969 to kill the young K. His partner, Agent J (Smith) travels back into the past to save K, with the help of… K. Or at least the younger version of K, played by Josh Brolin.

As you might guess from the previews, Brolin is terrific here. He does a rather uncanny impression of Tommy Lee Jones as K, but adds enough nuance to it to make it his own performance. As J notes in the film, the young K is typically stern, but he also doesn’t seen nearly as humorless and grumpy as his older version. Brolin manages to capture all of these different-but-the-same aspects perfectly and he and Smith have an easy chemistry, just as Smith and Jones do.

Unfortunately though, so much of Men in Black III just kind of sits there. J back in the 1960s, working with that era's Men in Black, offers a lot of possibilities, none of which are really explored. There is some fun production design and Rick Baker offers his usually excellent makeup FX, with the idea clearly being to make everything look like old school sci-fi – from the ray guns the MIB members use to the aliens they have in their offices. But it’s all mostly just there in the background. The same goes for the other Men in Black members we meet in the past, including Agent 0 (Alice Eve), whose older incarnation is played by Emma Thompson. O is established and then never really plays an important role. As for Clements, I was excited by the casting of the Flight of the Conchords alum and he has his moments, but his character never really pops as the kind of iconic movie villain you feel the filmmakers were going for.

There are sequences that stand out. Bill Hader pops up as Andy Warhol in one of the film’s more amusing scenes and Michael Stuhlbarg has some likable moments as Griffin, an alien who proves crucial to K and J’s mission. But much of the time the energy lags and the humor in Men in Black 3 is often lacking, with a lot of the jokes failing to land. Yes, there are simple joys to be had here just watching these characters in this world once again, and the film can be said to offer the basics people enjoy, but wouldn’t it have been nice to have gotten something more along the way than “adequate”?

Men in Black III is already a notorious production, having halted for several months so that the film’s script could be finished – because they actually began filming without the film completely written! Suffice to say that’s not a great idea, and likely contributes to the film’s disjointed tone and pace (it certainly couldn’t have helped). Returning director Barry Sonnenfeld makes things a bit darker and edgier than the franchise’s previous installments in the early scenes. The opening, involving Clements and an accomplice played by Nicole Scherzinger (of all people) is pretty cool and had me hopeful about what was to follow. But ultimately, Men in Black 3 never really comes together. There is a would-be dramatic reveal at the end of the movie that doesn’t have the desired impact, because it doesn’t feel earned and is in the midst of a pretty empty film.

It’s too bad. Men in Black is one of those great Hollywood movies that should have spawned a great series. Instead it sits alongside the likes of RoboCop, The Matrix and Ghostbusters as a series where we look back and go, “Well, the first one sure was awesome.”